I kind of landed on a show on TLC tonight about a 750 pound man and his treatment. The advertisers in the commercial break I’m watching now? An ad for What Not to Wear (a show in which catty people abuse fashion don’ts until they become fashion do’s) and pretty people eating candy bars. Why, why, why do we end up confused about body image in this country?

Update: next commercial break … Loreal ad with Andie McDowell trying to zip up a tight dress, Tommy Lee being a sexy rocker, and then an ad for chips.

I’m not saying that TV makes this stuff happen. We all hold personal responsibility for our bodies and so forth. But man, shows about body image (and body health) on commercial television can’t help but have contradictory ads given who pays for most of our TV shows. It’s just kind of who we are, but it’s pretty creepy when viewed under this particular microscope. Blech.

Governor Ahnult Schwarzenegger has a budget problem. Last week he let a bunch of people go, and this week he ordered that over 200,000 state employees be knocked down to minimum wage until a budget is approved. Here’s the problem: the payroll system where the change would have to be made is written in COBOL and is about 30 years old, and apparently last week he canned most of the remaining part-time programmers old enough to know how to modify it.

It doesn’t happen often, but I really do relish these moments when I realize that Illinois doesn’t have the only short-sighted moron of a governor in the country. Phew!

Dig it — we’ve watched TWO movies together in as many weeks. I feel like Roger Ebert. Tonight we watched Charlie Wilson’s War. It’s an Aaron Sorkin film, so expect blistering dialog and a liberal bent, but it’s a very good movie. Assuming it’s not totally wrong about history (I’m willing to assume a little flexibility in either direction there), it’s a fascinating story. And even if it’s totally bogus, it’s darn funny much of the way through. Afterward, Lizzie and I had a fun debate about the U.S. position in the world — good fun at the Kepler’s on a Friday night.

We just watched The Prestige, a movie about two turn-of-the-century London magicians who compete with each other until they ostensibly ruin each other’s lives. I won’t go into the plot twists — they’re too tasty to give away and far too detailed to go into here, but put this one in your Netflix queue. Expect to have to turn it up (it’s all mumbly like all movies where people are being emotional and British), but the last fifteen minutes (if we understood them correctly) are worth the whole move’s worth of buildup. It’s the first movie since Memento where I immediately wanted to watch it again to catch all the clues I missed the first time.

And Michael Caine, as usual, masterfully plays a supporting role without which the whole movie would stink.

I joined Facebook about a year ago. I didn’t do much with it, tended to ignore the very sporadic invitations to games from the few people who knew I were there, and so on. Now in the past few weeks, I’ve started going nuts with it. We all have — a bunch of us here in Evanston (all friends from high school) are all digging into Facebook with some verve. I was doing great — having a nice time getting back in touch with some people (some of whom live less than a mile away), following up on old friends, and so on. But now I’m in over my head.

My cousin Ian has written on my wall.

Don’t get me wrong — this is great. I love that I’m getting back in touch with family I haven’t seen in a while. It’s just that, well … he’s fifteen. Athletic. Popular. Followed around by girls. Most importantly, he knows how this stuff works, and I’m staggering around so violently that I’m knocking the tennis balls off my walker. It was in response to a note in a friend request from me, but now I’m not sure what I’ve done. I responded using the wall-to-wall thing, but I think maybe I was supposed to write back to him on MY wall. Or maybe on his wall. Oh, God, I haven’t felt this old EVER before.

Anyhow, look me up — Dave Fourputt, if you’re into all of this, give me a poke. I’m overrun with bleeding-heart liberals (admittedly, due to the circles I prefer to run in), but I’d love to get a slightly wider perspective stopping by. Just be gentle and tell loudly and clearly me what to do if you write on my wall.

I think it’s time for my pills …

Doug will remember the first time I blew out my knee — we were at a driving range up on route 83 (Ballybunion, Ballykissangel, BallyMcBeal, something like that), and during my backswing I went down like I’d been shot. My knee had twisted out of alignment with a sickeningly loud, wet pop, and popped back in again while I was busy falling over. I was able to drive myself home from his house (he drove my little Justy from the range back to his place — it was a funny car to drive with about three inches of motion on the clutch in all, so it was an exciting drive). I went to the ER from there, got a big brace and some good drugs and a referral to an orthopedist, and eventually life got back to normal.

I did it again on Monday while hitting balls at the grass range at Willow Hill Golf Course. I was there with my buddy Eric, and the same thing happened. I went down in a heap (unfortunate, as it had rained the night before — I was pretty wet and mossy for the rest of the day), and spent about five minutes on my butt assessing whether I could then go play. Judging from my doctor’s expression later, my choice to go walk nine anyway was not what you’d call “doctor recommended.” Anyhow, I think my fear of doing it a third time actually fixed my swing a bit (I tend to torque around on that left knee far too much, relying on it to make up for some of the snap that my upper body is lacking in my swing). We didn’t keep score as it was my first time out in a year, but of nine holes on a windy links-style course, I think I had four bogeys. No pars and one or two blowout holes, but it was a very good time.

So I iced and wrapped it when I got home, and figured that was that. But Monday night I was up much of the night with it, and found it very difficult to get down the stairs Tuesday morning. So I made a doctor appointment. Dr. Kirchoff checked it out, waggled it this way, wiggled it that way, and thought I may well have torn a ligament toward the front inside of my knee (judging from the diagrams I’ve found, I think she was talking about the medial collateral ligament — there was something about the meniscus in what she said, too, but I can’t find a term like that on any of the stuff I’ve found so far). Anyhow, she ordered an MRI. I called and scheduled it from the car after that appointment, wanting to get this back under control as soon as I could. That’s when the fun began.

I had a call this morning about it from the hospital’s insurance people — apparently our insurance company typically takes two to four days to approve or deny this test, so the nice lady warned me that I might not get approval before the appointment I made, and that they recommend that I cancel the appointment until approved. She said she’d call back before the end of the day.

Sure enough, she did. She was great — sympathetic, informative, and so on. But her news was bad — our insurance company had (in record time) denied the MRI on the grounds that four to six weeks of more conservative treatment had not been given first. I am supposed to ice it for four to six weeks and take Advil regularly (and document it), and if I’m still debilitated after that we could resubmit the request. She told me that they might be willing to expedite things if I had an X-ray first.

X-rays don’t find torn ligaments. They don’t find torn or frayed meniscus problems. They really ONLY find broken or chipped bones or major alignment issues, which are clearly not the issue here. So in order to get my MRI, I have to do four to six weeks of ice and Ace bandages, or do the X-ray dance in hopes of getting my MRI in four weeks instead of six. By that time, evidence of damage might be harder to find, or a tear might start to heal (with scar tissue that could otherwise be avoided).

Bless her heart, the nice lady who works for the hospital spends all day every day toggling back and forth between conversations with insurance companies and patients. And she probably has to argue with the former and provide the latter with crappy news more often than not. What a job.

Anyhow, it seems to me that if my doctor orders a test, it should be approved. If my doctor develops a history of unnecessary tests, that’s one thing. But a blown knee is a blown knee, and if I’d gone to the ER instead of my doctor it would all be done by now (at much greater cost to the insurance company).

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that our deductible is $1000 each — Lizzie has burned through most of her deductible already because of some funky wrist stuff, but I’m still sitting pretty with all of my balance. So the MRI likely would have cost the full deductible, but adding the X-ray at the beginning sure as hell would have. And by adding the irrelevant X-ray, you’re only adding to the part that the insurance company will then have to pay for if the MRI is then approved. I just don’t get it.

I decided (pending any urgent information from my doc) to just wait it out. If I heal sufficiently by four weeks from now, I’ll just be done. If not, I’ll pursue it. But this X-ray prerequisite is ridiculous. It’s no wonder insurance companies have the reputation that they do. Given that I’ve decided to limp about and self-treat for six weeks instead of trying to cash in the coverage we pay for with every paycheck, I’d say our confidence in the system is shaken.

Anyhow, I’m now sitting in my office with my big bulby knee, wrapped tightly with a cold pack inside. Two days of icing and wrapping hasn’t helped — only 26-40 days to go before I can try to go get diagnosed again. Crazy.

After Lizzie’s second stint in a couple months on the shoulder of I-294 in an overheating 94 Accord wagon, we decided enough was enough. We were sinking an average of $350-400 into the car if you average the last eight months or so out, and we finally realized that that’s a car payment. So we went to trade it in today and buy a Honda Fit. Against all odds, Lizzie (who will do most of the driving in this car) preferred the standard to the automatic — she has a lot of city traffic, but it’s SO much zippier than the automatic was. I danced a little jig — I really love driving stick. We had a great salesman named David at Elmhurst Honda — NO sales pitch whatsoever. Let us drive it, let us ask the questions, answered them fully and offered a little more information, and basically just sat back and let us run the show. Got us a good deal that matched what we could do when we said we couldn’t swing the original numbers, and it was all done it about two hours. We still had time for lunch at the Wendy’s you see behind it. If you’re looking for a Honda, you couldn’t do better than David.

It’s Cubbie blue. I was sitting there waiting for David to finish some incantation or other in The Back Room and starting to freak out, and Lizzie chose that moment to point out the particular shade of blue that it is. I immediately started to feel better. She must know me or something. Anyhow, the panic of the stacks of money we just committed to aside, it’s a neat car. Good mileage, huge inside, small outside, the seats all reconfigure a bunch of ways so you can fit all kinds of things in the car, and it drives very tightly. It does other things, too — it checks our tire pressure, checks the position and weight of all the occupants against the speed of the car and adjusts the six airbags so only the right ones go off at the right pressure (so a mild fender bender doesn’t result in you picking your glasses out of your forehead), and so on. All kinds of fun toys. And it’s cute as a button.

The best part, though? A 7-year, 100,000-mile warranty. I LOVE THAT. When you buy only $500 cars, they tend to cost more than $500 very quickly. 100,000 miles is a lot of miles before we have to start covering everything.

Lizzie has had a couple of new cars, but this is my first one. I’m as panicky as I am happy, but this really is pretty kicky. Of course, there was a big wind/rain/hailstorm on our way home, so we spent the whole drive dodging and weaving and worrying about banging up the new car right off the lot. But here’s a fun stat — we increased the mileage on it by 200% on the way home. It had 12 miles on it when we drove it away, and it now has 36 miles. Tee hee!

John McCain has now taken a dumb cheap shot at Jimmy Carter, calling him a lousy president. He must have an angle. Maybe he’s trying to make peace with Iran after his musical interlude of “bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb-Iran”? Maybe this is a clumsy end-around to get something going about a Democrat in office during a gas shortage? Maybe he doesn’t like peanuts? Southerners? Habitat for Humanity?

No, wait, I know what it is. He’s a tactless bastard with no respect for anyone but himself. I would call him a curmudgeon, but that word (to me) implies some tongue-in-cheek humor (however dark). It also implies deeper understanding of what the curmudgeon is griping about and an urge to display a superior intellect and vocabulary in his public and sarcastic disdain for it. I don’t think that’s the case here — his statements tend to sound more like a playground bully who thinks he’s funny than like a classic curmudgeon.

All politics aside (and I really mean that — this has nothing to do with his position on anything in particular), I can’t imagine letting this guy loose on the world for four (or, God help us, eight) years. Bush is what he is — and thankfully, he won’t be it at us much longer. But McCain is simply a deeply mean person. He’d be mean to Congress. He’d be mean to the UN. He’d be mean at a barbecue. He’d be mean at the Easter Egg roll. He’s just a jerk, and can only hide that for so long before he blows it. And at risk of sounding too hippie-dippy, I must admit that I think there’s a level of meanness beyond which you are not ideal for the presidency. Straight talk is one thing — nasty, name-calling statements about a former president (former by 28 years) is just crummy and childish. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised — this is a consistent, every-six-week-or-so occurrence from the Straight Talk Express.

No, Carter wasn’t a good particularly president. Did America improve under his watch? Hard to say it did, all things considered. He was and is a good man, but realistically, he wasn’t the right fit for the country at the time. But did we enter a preemptive war based on intentionally specious reasoning during his watch? Did he systematically dismantle the Constitutional right to privacy? No. He micromanaged the White House into ineffectiveness, allowed gas prices to get away from him, made what I still think was a valiant but failed poorly planned attempt to rescue the hostages, and had a brother who he couldn’t control. For that last bit, Clinton had one too. Bobby Kennedy would have had one if he had lived to be elected. And if the Bushes had run Jeb instead of W as they originally wanted to, Jeb would have one, too.

But I digress. It really comes down to this: if you want the job, show some respect for those who have held it before you. In addition to displaying basic honor and integrity, it shows the American people that you will respect the job while YOU hold it. The worst thing that I’ve heard Obama say about Bush or McCain (and I’ll admit I haven’t heard everything, so he may well have lowroaded on something and I wouldn’t know) is that McCain would be four more years of Bush. In my opinion, that statement far too accurately defines them both.

After Doug’s post a couple months ago about a hailstorm in Seattle, I was left trying to remember the last major hailstorm we had here. The last one I can remember was when I still had my Subaru Justy (around 1997-2000) — I got caught on McCormick Boulevard (long red lights) in a storm that produced half-inch hail upon my poor little roller skate of a car, and it was bloody loud.

Tonight, we had a similar storm. Nora and I went outside to check it out (from under the covered part of the deck), and watched it basically blast out our hanging plants and garden. Hopefully they’ll recover, but it was one whale of a storm. Some of the hailstones were almost 3/4″ wide, and most were about 1/2″. Crazy. I haven’t checked my car yet, but I suspect my resale value has gone down a bit more (a ‘94 Mercury Tracer wagon with front end damage draws a pretty penny if there’s no hail damage, you know).

Everyone knows about Tiger Woods and his bum knee. But if I were another golfer on the tour, I’d be pretty cranky about the funeral dirge that the sports media is playing now. The season is apparently over if Tiger won’t be there. Today on SportsCenter, Rick Reilly called the tour “all Pips and no Gladys.” Funny, but I think Rocco put together a pretty entertaining round himself last week, too!